SHOSTAKOVICH IN YORK

Dan Chapman
Jul 16
5 min read

York Chamber Music Festival is marking the fiftieth anniversary of the death of one of the truly great twentieth century composers by playing two of Shostakovich’s iconic chamber music masterpieces; his Eighth String Quartet and his Viola Sonata which was the last piece he wrote, finishing only a few weeks before his death in August 1975. Both pieces have a strong autobiographical content so tell us a great deal about this enigmatic musical genius.

The Russian composer spent much of his life on a knife edge between his inner voice and the world he was forced to inhabit, dominated at first by Stalin , who terrified him. Later under duress Shostakovich did reluctantly join the Communist Party to appease the Politburo, while in his ‘real’ world writing music from his soul, that would never be understood by a soulless ideological system, especially in the intimate medium of the string quartet. Latterly he became so internationally famous that the political system could not touch him and he took his music all over the world. Indeed, the Western premières of his last three string quartets were entrusted to the Fitzwilliam String Quartet – resident at the time in the Music Department of York University.

Shostakovich himself came to York University campus in November 1972 and joined a packed audience in the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall to attend the second performance in Western Europe of his thirteenth string quartet played by the Fitzwilliams. The viola player in the quartet Alan George recollects meeting him at York station. Alan recently retired (in 2024) from the quartet as the longest serving member of a string quartet in the country; he was a founding member of the group from their days as students at Cambridge University. Shostakovich spoke of his liking for the Fitzwilliam Quartet to Benjamin Britten. They played the UK premières of his three late string quartets; Nos. 13, 14 and 15. They were also one of the first quartets to record the complete cycle of the 15 quartets.

Shostakovich - Life and Music

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was established in 1922 and for a time the Arts enjoyed a period of freedom to experiment with new ideas, art forms and musical styles connected to avant garde movements in Europe but this period of artistic flourishing ended with the death of Lenin and eventually the ruthless grip on power of the murderous Stalin; the Arts became an arm of the state’s propaganda machine. Music and literature were heavily censored according to what was considered good for the people. The system was based on threats and purges of dissidents. Gulag prisons were set up. Stalin through rigorously managed state economy forced rapid industrialisation in manufacturing and in parallel the collectivization of agriculture. Millions died of starvation in the early 1930s as the Communist Party took a stranglehold grip on society.

Shostakovich's life was one of conflicting emotions and affiliations even as the clouds of Stalinism lifted. To navigate the complexities he faced and yet be true to himself, often we find more than one thing happening at once. He counted among his weapons parody and satire, carnival and the grotesque. But also music of great beauty that emanated from his deepest creative source. Perhaps we should think of his music as kind of commentary on the lives of millions of ordinary Russians whom he lived alongside. In that sense, as the American music critic Wendy Lesser suggests his music is the secret memoir of a people. But what matters is that the music itself, breaks out of its immediate context. Listening to Shostakovich in the 21st century we can hear it in its entirety on its own terms, set in our own time, also with its ambiguities, terrors, absurdities and persecutions.

There are conflicting views about why Shostakovich joined the Communist Party in 1960 about the time he wrote his Eighth String Quartet. Why he did he not defect to the West? Was he a party hack or an heroic dissident, a tortured genius clever enough to play the party managers game? None of these is wholly true. The political labels simply do not stick. He is portrayed, mostly in the West, as haunted and anxious, depressive, even suicidal; almost a martyred composer. But he was not that person. He loved playing poker, smoked incessantly, was the life and soul of a parry after drinking a few vodkas, loved football (he was a lifelong fan of Zenit Leningrad).

And Deep Within

Perhaps the most elusive aspect of his music is not only his self-quotation but also an echo deep within the music of other cultural references that he loved and knew about. One such is relevant to the Eighth String Quartet (which is performed in Event Two) for inside it there is something that suggests reference to Richard Strauss’s string masterpiece Metamorphosen, written during the end game of the Second World War when death and destruction was all around him; much of Germany lay in ruins and it is this context that haunts the music. Since Hitler had seized power in 1933 the Third Reich set about controlling every aspect of national life, anything critical or subversive of Nazi ideals, especially of the racial purity of the people.

The ghost reference in the Shostakovich quartet is his identification with Jewish themes – his Jewish friends swept up in the nightmare which resonated with Richard Strauss because his daughter-in-law was Jewish and he was terrified about the fate of his family. Shostakovich certainly knew Metamorphosen, and seems to identify with Strauss who walked a tightrope with the Nazi Party just as later on Shostakovich did with the Communist Party which he reluctantly joined shortly before he wrote his eighth quartet (in July 1960) alongside his official role composing the score for the Soviet film Five Days – Five Nights about the evisceration of Dresden. Strauss was heartbroken at the destruction of the cultural capital of the Weimar republic. It adds another ghost hovering over the Eighth Quartet.

Before they recorded the Eighth String Quartet the Borodin Quartet played it through to the composer at his Moscow home, hoping for his criticisms. But Shostakovich, overwhelmed by this beautiful realisation of his most personal feelings, buried his head in his hands and wept. When they had finished playing, the four musicians quietly packed up their instruments and stole out of the room.